MJ: DEEP CULTURAL DISCOUNT

THE TWO EASIEST media responses to the death of a public figure are reverence or ridicule, and Michael Jackson made both easy. A singer of breathtaking suppleness and soulfulness, one whose early work with the Jackson 5 the rock critic Dave Marsh called “the last great moment of soul as we knew it,” and a dancer who, as the film critic David Edelstein observed in a piece on CBS’s “Sunday Morning,” seemed intent on synthesizing the entire history of popular dance from Fred Astaire on, Jackson was one of the few performers who could truly amaze you. And as a reclusive, obviously troubled man whose talents were eclipsed by public eccentricities and allegations of private behavior that despite a not-guilty verdict in his 2002 child molestation trial most of us still believe, Jackson was, like Elvis, an active participant in creating an image of himself as freak… Charles Taylor in Dissent